I’ve recently finished reading Kent Anderson’s Television Fraud: The History and Implications of the Quiz Show Scandals, and I have a question for Dopers who have knowledge of what TV was like in the 1950s:
How commonplace was it for shows to be pre-empted?
Several times throughout the book, there is reference to the pre-empting of Twenty-one or The $64,000 Question or one of the other big-money quiz shows, and this struck me as rather odd. Odder still is the matter-of-course way in which these pre-emptings are mentioned. Being a regular viewer of television since the early- to mid-1970s, I am accustomed to a world in which pre-empting only happens when something of terrific importance happens (e.g., the attempted assassination of President Reagan). But never does Anderson say “Twenty-one was pre-empted the following week for a news report about Sputnik.” Instead, it’s just “Twenty-one was pre-empted the following week.”
Now, as I understand the television world of that time, there were only ABC, CBS, and NBC. DuMont, maybe, I can’t recall. No PBS yet, and damn sure no Fox, WB, or UPN. It goes without saying that CNN and the other 24-hour cable news channels were nowhere to be seen. So I can certainly understand that the threshold of “newsworthy enough to interrupt our regular broadcast” might have been considerably lower than it is today.
It is possible that I’m just reacting to his use of the term. Modern usage of “pre-empt” would normally mean an unplanned failure to air a show at its regular time. In other words, if a show is supposed to be shown every Tuesday night at 9:00 Eastern (hypothetically ;)), but isn’t shown on one particular Tuesday night because of some catastrophe, we would say that show was pre-empted. If it wasn’t shown on one particular Tuesday night because the network was carrying a special they had been advertising for weeks, I don’t think we would normally use the term “pre-empted” to describe that. Is it the case that they did use the term that way in the 1950s?
Two things you are not taking into consideration. Those were the early days of television and there were not a lot of hard and fast rules, so to interrupt a popular quiz show for a live broadcast of The Crucible or Marty was quite regular. I think it was because the powers that be wanted some “good stuff” to be seen during their most popular time slot, thus the pre-emption. Possibly it was because of those same powers saw quiz shows as kind of low-brow and maybe felt that a high-brow break made them look good.
I vaguely remember one time when my parents let me watch some live television play regarding Christmas, and the announcer began with, “We’d like to thank the producers and sponsors of The $64,000 Question for letting us use their time slot,” or something to that effect. As I said it is pretty vague.
Don’t think that it was much breaking news since the cameras of the time were about the size of a buick. Established stuff like the McCarthy and Kefaufer (sp) hearings were televised mostly (but mostly in the afternoons, if I remember correctly) because they were in doors and in a big room, but for the most parts not riots, fires or slow speed car chases. That just wasn’t practical.
I will say I seem to remember when Eisenhauer and Nixon did speak to the Nation it seemed to be during things like the evening quiz shows. Maybe they felt like it was a good audience to tap. It was also a good time slot to reach the entire nation.
I also remember that in 1956 and 60 the presidential conventions basically ran from sign on to sign off pre-empting all programing, even Howdy Doody which upset me to no end, I can tell you.
TV
The shows might have been pre-empted for Christmas shows or the like. I"m still trying to find other reasons.
“Pre-empt” did not (and still does not) necessarilly mean an unplanned interruption in a show’s regular schedule. As TV Time noted, there were many special presentations that took the place of an evening’s regular programming – probably even more than today.
There is a story among “I Love Lucy” fans that one week the live drama preceeding the show came in with a script that was 15 minutes long. Rather than cut the script, the producers appealed to Desi Arnaz, who not only gave up the time slot, but agreed to introduce the drama and explain to the viewers.
I don’t know about the 1950s, but I do remember telecasts of Detroit Tiger games being pre-empted in 1973 or so by the Watergate hearings.
At the time, I really did not care much about politics, I just wanted to see Al Kaline and the rest of the Tigers play!